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Suffering from recipe-blog syndrome

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Recipe blogs infamously include a lot of text before the recipe. This apparently helps with SEO, and search-engine traffic is critical for sites trying to make a profit online. But these long introductions are frustrating to the reader.

Average reader: (scrolling furiously) I don’t need to know your life story with this recipe; I just want to know how to make blueberry muffins!

While I don’t feel the need to overshare personal details when I’m writing, I do feel the pull to include long introductions to my articles. It’s like I’m trying to justify to the reader why this article was worth writing.

But they don’t care! Almost all of my traffic comes from search engines. My users obviously think the article was worth writing: they clicked on it! I don’t need to waste their time and mine with a introduction explaining why this article should exist.

My advice to myself: don’t qualify; just write.